


Old Friends, Bookends

by bwblack



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-12
Updated: 2011-03-12
Packaged: 2017-10-16 22:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/169844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwblack/pseuds/bwblack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After The Great Game, Lestrade brings his guitar, and his most personal case file when he goes to visit the bored and banged up residents of 221-B Baker Street.   Written for this <a href="http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/6375.html?thread=29205479#t29205479">prompt</a> at the kinkmeme and the <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/dilestrade/48796.html">Lestrade centric prompt post</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Friends, Bookends

His sisters always argued over John and Paul but his earliest memory is watching George’s long slender fingers curl into unlikely formations on the neck of his guitar. When he was four he stole his sister’s tennis racket to practice getting his finger into those magical positions. He was grounded for a week.

When he was seven he got a bike for Christmas. It wasn’t what he wanted.

When he was nine he caught his sister sneaking into his bedroom and out his bedroom window to meet her waiting boyfriend. As they rode off on his motorbike, Greg realized he could leave that way as well. He peddled his ten speed to the local pub to listen to the live music wafting from the building.

When he was eleven his mother and sisters saved up to get him a second hand guitar for Christmas. It had a broken fret and a dark scorch mark on the base from a cigarette, but he never loved another gift more. He named it James and started nicking cigs from his father.

He checked out every book on guitars from the library, read every word in each book and when he was done he started back at the first. He got caught studying music books in class. He was sure Mrs. Post would call his mother. She warned him to get his marks up, and loaned him a stack of records when he did. He never loved a teacher more.

That summer he painted her house. She helped him restore James.

When he was seventeen, Mrs. Post drowned in her tub. They said it was an accident. They whispered it was suicide. He didn’t believe it, he never believed it. He left school at winter break and joined the police.

He never looked back. Well, he kept a copy of her file at the bottom of his desk. He hadn’t looked at in years. He’d never shown it to Sherlock, couldn’t show it to Sherlock. If it really was a suicide…

He can’t bring himself to think about it, even now, nearly 30 years later.

But the last time he dropped in on Sherlock and John at the Baker Street flat, they’d seemed like they were about to go a bit mad. Sherlock’s hip length cast left him with precious little mobility and very little to occupy his mind. The Yard had received more than a few complaints from occupants of the building across the way, passing motorists, and patrons of a small sandwich shop. They had received a number of unsolicited texts commenting on the state of their marriages, lunch choices, driving habits, personal hygiene, and speculating on the moment and manner of their deaths.

He wasn’t sure that text spamming was illegal. But he thought the housebound residents of 221B might need a little entertaining. There was so little John could do to keep his flatmate entertained with both arms in slings. He riffled through the files at the bottom of his drawer looking for the best, most interesting, most perplexing cold cases he could find.

He found Mrs. Post’s file at the very bottom of the stack and started to lock it back in its drawer. But, no, it was time. If he was ever going to ask for help on this case, now would be the time. He put the files in his attaché case, ordered a large takeaway order from a place he liked and stopped by his flat. He had some things there that had never made their way into the file as it had been ruled an accident and closed long before he finished his training. He also brought James.

He’d owned many guitars in the more than 30 years since he received that first one. Some of them were beautiful. Some of them had been brand new cost several months salary, many had been pre-owned and lovingly restored, but he never loved any acoustic instrument the way he did James, and he didn’t feel he could tell Mrs. Post’s story without him.

\--

“You’ve got a visitor, Sherlock,” Mrs. Hudson announced as she let herself into the second story flat. She’d come carrying a large box of food.

“You’ve brought us dinner?” John smiled.

“Not your delivery service, Dear.” Mrs. Hudson answered with a smile that seemed forced.

“I can’t go downstairs, and John can’t really carry anything….” Sherlock reminded her, smiling his most manipulative smile.

“You didn’t need to carry the food up, Mrs. Hudson.” Lestrade chided as he came in after her.

“You were carrying a guitar and a briefcase. I hoped we might be in for a bit of a show,” she put the takeaway down in the kitchen.

“I hadn’t planned…” Lestrade started to protest.

“We could do with some entertainment. Sherlock gives away the endings to all the police shows.”

“Does that in real life too,” Lestrade winked at the landlady.

“Play for us?” She batted her eyelashes.

“Yes, play for us?” John mimicked the move in a mocking gesture.

“I couldn’t,” Lestrade protested as he took plates from their cupboard.

“Given the size, shape, and thickness of the calluses on the tips of your left fingers, I rather suspect you can,” Sherlock injected.

“I don’t really play all that much anymore,” Lestrade shook his head and dished up a plate of food for himself. “Can I do yours, John?”

“Calluses soften with time… if you’d quit playing…” Sherlock protested.

“I still play, when I can’t sleep, when a case is weighing on my mind, when I’ve had a rough day…”

“So every day,” Sherlock smirked.

Lestrade started to protest, but it was true enough. “I haven’t played for an audience in a long, long time.”

“Bout time isn’t it then, Dear?” Mrs. Hudson scurried around behind him making her own plate.

He didn’t dare mention she hadn’t been invited. She was a sweet old lady and she probably took more abuse from bored Sherlock than he ever would.

“You haven’t offered me a plate,” Sherlock groused.

“Your arms work,” Lestrade bit back as he delivered a plate to John.

“But my leg bumps into things all over the place.”

“If I get you a plate, will you eat anything off it?”

Sherlock shrugged, “Never mind.”

“I’ve brought you case files.”

Sherlock brightened considerably but said, “I’m recuperating.”

“I won’t beg.”

“Fine. May I see the case files? I’ll read them while the rest of you eat.”

“Fine,” Lestrade agreed and brought his briefcase to his consultant.

“Wait, we’re still having a show right?” Mrs. Hudson looked a bit deflated.

“Yeah, we want a show.” John pouted in a tone that seemed less mocking than before.

“I really don’t play for people.”

“I could share my herbal soothers, if you’re nervous.” Mrs. Hudson offered, brightly.

“Thanks, no, I’m…”

“A couple of beers then? You haven’t brought any and this lot seems out.”

“Yes please,” John and Lestrade both said at once.

“Boring!” Sherlock called from the corner of the room where he was already working through his second case file.

“The beer or the case?” John’s brow furrowed.

“Both.”

“She really moves when she’s motivated,” Lestrade noted Mrs. Hudson had somehow already left the flat on her quest for beer.

“It’s the herbal soothers,” John agreed.

\--

An hour and three beers later and Lestrade was feeling no pain. He’d even stopped trying to analyze every sound coming from Sherlock’s little corner of the room. He’d been desperate at first to glean any hint of Sherlock’s feeling on the cases he’d brought, especially the one. But a little bit buzzed, full of good food and better conversation, he'd found himself less invested in Sherlock's reactions.  
John regaled them with stories of medical school pranks.

Mrs. Hudson’s life had been amazing. He would have been intimidated by the number and variety of Mrs. Hudson’s adventures if it weren’t for the fact that she made him feel young. Suddenly it seemed he still had time to do anything, everything on his list and more.

Maybe it was the heady rush of it all that made him vulnerable to this latest attack, maybe it was Sherlock’s sudden expulsion of words from the side of the room, “Somebody bring me Stratford.”

“Stratford?”

“Stratford the Stradivarius,” John rolled his eyes.

“You want your violin?” Lestrade began searching the room for its case.

“Obviously,” Sherlock rolled his eyes.

Lestrade plucked a note as he handed it to the man.

“And the bow.”

“It wasn’t in with it.” Lestrade protested.

Sherlock’s brown furrowed, “right, my bedroom.”

Lestrade hesitated.

“Oh, don’t be a baby,” Mrs. Hudson retrieved the bow.

“I had a bit of an itch,” Sherlock explained.

Mrs. Hudson very nearly dropped the thing.

Lestrade smirked, “seems like we’ll have a bit of a show after all.”

“Only if you’ll play with me.”

“Kinky,” Mrs. Hudson interjected.

John nearly spit out his beer.

“The guitar, Mrs. Hudson.” Sherlock scoffed.

“I really couldn’t…” Lestrade said again, but with less force than he had previously.

Sherlock raised his bow and produced a series of discordant notes.

“Sherlock!” Mrs. Hudson protested. “We have company.”

“He plays really quite beautifully, sometimes.” John sighed. “Less when he’s trying to be annoying.”

“There is no uglier sound in the world than a poorly played violin,” Mrs. Hudson protested.

“I agree,” Sherlock smiled widely.

“Then play like the virtuoso everybody knows you are.”

“Only if you join me.”

“I…”

“You can,” Sherlock raised his bow at an off angle and Lestrade groaned.

“Fine, fine, fine… but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Sherlock nodded.

“What are we playing?” Lestrade asked as he took a seat next to Sherlock.

“Follow me.”

“Sherlock, I couldn’t possibly….” he sighed.

“Keep up the best you can.”

“This is going to be a bit of a disaster,” Lestrade warned the group.

“We’re not fussed,” John shrugged.

“We’ve seen more than our fair share of those, all of us in this room,” Mrs. Hudson opened another beer, her fourth.

Sherlock readied his bow.

Lestrade said a silent prayer to a saint he hadn’t believed in even before he left the church.

And then Sherlock began.

Lestrade listened for a minute before joining in. And it was okay. It took a second for him to find the rhythm, to anticipate the changes, but the longer the played the easier it became and he quickly lost himself in the music.

He wasn’t entirely sure of everything they’d played. He’d known some of it well, especially the early stuff.   
Mrs. Hudson had a surprisingly good singing voice.

John, less so, but the pain from two broken clavicles probably wasn't helping.

Other things he’d heard before and kept up easily.

By the end it was completely new but it felt good, really good. He hadn’t felt as light and free when he finished playing since he was a much younger man.

“That was…” John said when Lestrade put down his guitar, “that was bloody brilliant.”

“Think I might have a bit of a crush,” Mrs. Hudson announced.

Lestrade waggled his eyebrows suggestively then blushed when she blew him a kiss. “It’s late, I should be…”

“You don’t want to discuss the cases.”

“You’ve solved them already?” Lestrade felt so good about the food and the beer and the music it hardly stung that the man might have solved his most vexing cases with nothing more than a read through.

“You’ll have to do the legwork,” he used his bow to indicate his broken leg, “But the gardener, the florist, the director of the flower show. You seem to have a bit of a block when it comes to horticulture.”

“Alergies,” Lestrade admitted.

“Best stop by the chemist tomorrow, then.”

“And the last case?” he asked suddenly sober and unsure he wanted to know.

“It wasn’t suicide.”

“An accident?”

“I don’t think so….”

“Sherlock?”

“Bring Thai food when you come tomorrow, it will help clear your sinuses, and we’ll discuss it.”

“Sherlock…”

“Leave the guitar,” Sherlock instructed.

“Sherlock!”

“No sense lugging it all the way home and back.”

“I’ll buy more beer,” Mrs. Hudson announced gleefully.

“Sherlock, I’m not…”

“Tomorrow, inspector.”

Lestrade yawned, “Fine, tomorrow… “

Sherlock grinned, “tomorrow.”

“Maybe I’ll bake some…”

“Tomorrow.” He said and made his way out the door before he had to arrest that sweet old woman.


End file.
